


hurled to the earth

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2135169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire Novak in Endverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hurled to the earth

**Author's Note:**

> It's August 2014. The End is nigh.

_Will it save my mom and dad?_ Claire asks, tremulous and lost inside the breathless, blinding shine behind her eyes.

Castiel says yes, so she does, too.

* * *

Claire rounds the end of the frozen food aisle to find her mom talking with the school librarian, nebbishy old Mr Hunsford. When he notices her approach, his pleasant smile broadens with satisfaction. "There you are, Miss Novak," he greets her, and in the beat it takes her to remember that her last name hasn't been Novak for months, his eyes blink oil-slick black behind his little round glasses. "I must tell you, Amelia, your daughter smells just _heavenly_."

Claire throws her entire thermos of holy water on him, and her mother grabs her hand, and they run for the exit with Mr Hunsford's screams echoing through the store behind them.

They hear about the incident on the news later, as they speed towards the next state over. Claire tries not to listen too closely, but her mom is silent in the driver's seat, and they both hear their aliases, and Mr Hunsford's name, and the words "acid" and "disfigured" and "blinded". Her mom does a pretty good job of keeping the car steady, even as her white-knuckled hands shake on the wheel. Claire does a pretty good job of not sobbing aloud.

_They found us,_ she prays, twisting her fingers together in her lap. _They found us, Castiel, but we got away, we got away, tell my dad we got away._

* * *

It's a small house, surrounded by trees and set back almost a mile from the road, the lane to the front door camouflaged carefully with cultivated overgrowth. It's a small house, a boxy bungalow at least eighty years old, with newly reinforced doors and barricaded windows. It's a small house, made for maybe five people, currently housing fifteen.

"Claire, honey," her mom says, stepping back from the door frame, gesturing her forward with a listless wave of her pale hand. Her face is drawn, unhappiness in the pinch around her eyes and mouth, but she doesn't object, not anymore.

Claire pushes off the wall, swaying a little on her feet. This used to take only a pinprick, no more blood than a single, smeared fingerprint, just once a day; now, for the second time since morning, Claire offers her arm to the sure slice of a knife, and barely flinches at the slow well and spill. 

"That's it, darling," their host murmurs approvingly as he catches Claire's blood in a bowl, as Claire's mother turns to ready a towel and tourniquet. Claire hates his constant proximity, the exaggerated sincerity of his helpfulness, the assessing glimmer in his eyes every time he looks at her. Crowley's a demon, and won't touch her blood himself, but he sure does like to watch it flow. "That's it. Very nice. Now sit down before you fall and bruise that pretty little vessel any more than it already is."

Dully, as her mom tends to her arm, Claire watches Crowley rewrite the wards. He wears stained rubber gloves, bright yellow and ridiculous at the ends of his black-clad arms. His suit used to be perfectly tailored, but now it's ragged at the seams, its expensive threads frayed. Claire likes to see him wince when he closes the final sigil, sealing out all evil and sealing himself in. He doesn't like being trapped with them any more than they like being cooped up with him, but he needs the protection from Lucifer and his army just as much as they do.

When she's tightly bandaged and halfway through a bottle of water, she wanders through the house, aiming idly for the mattress she and her mom share on the floor of the old summer kitchen. Along the way, out of habit, she counts the safehouse's other occupants, ticking off names on her mental list and ignoring the glances they send her as she passes.

Missouri meets her at the threshold. "He's bleeding you like a stuck pig, sugar," she tuts, wrapping her dry fingers gently but firmly around Claire's wrist as she accompanies her to the bed.

Claire sighs. "Is he still doing it to protect us?"

Missouri turns her head toward the front room, her face set thoughtfully, her gaze distant. At last, a little reluctantly, she declares, "Yes, he is."

Claire sinks tiredly down onto the mattress. "Oink, oink."

* * *

There aren't many restaurants still open anymore. The ones still in business flaunt the newer laws--against public assembly, against communal food, even against interstate travel, tangentially--but if you know where to look, you can find them.

A lot of hunters know where to look, and Claire knows a lot of hunters.

She's just finishing her dinner when a man in a heavy coat sitting at the end of the diner's counter exclaims, "Revelation 12:9!" He flings his arms out at his sides, tips his head back, shouts at the ceiling. "The great dragon was hurled down! That ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world!"

In her booth by the door, her tea and Caesar salad curdling in her stomach, Claire pulls her gun quietly from her waistband and thumbs the safety.

"Revelation 3:20!" The man's mania-edged voice rings off the walls. The diner's only other customer, a thin man in a trucker's cap, is frozen in his seat except for his leg, which judders restlessly under the counter. The teenaged waiter shifts nervously where he stands behind the cash register, colour leeching from his face. The noises from the kitchen have stopped. "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and _eat them_ , and _they me_!"

It happens too quickly: the man lunges across the counter and bears the waiter, screaming, to the ground; the trucker launches himself from his seat with butter knife in hand and joins in, snarling. Claire's just made it to her feet when the kitchen door swings open; the cook emerges brandishing a giant cleaver, looks down at the rabid tangle behind the counter, and stops, and pales, and retches.

Claire makes it two steps away from her booth before the lightbulbs flicker and burst, and the waiter's screams are drowned out by a piercing whine that seems to come from nowhere, and the glass windows that make up the front wall of the diner tremble and shatter. She crouches under the spray of glass, arms around her head, eyes squeezed shut, ears ringing. She prays instinctively, wordlessly, with no hope for a response.

Abruptly, it all stops.

In the jarring silence, Claire lifts her head cautiously, then stands quickly. She raises her gun to aim at the woman dressed in a park ranger's uniform standing just inside the door of the diner, watching her.

"Claire Novak," the woman says. Claire has her finger on the trigger before the woman holds out a placating hand, shaking her head. "No no, I'm not--don't be afraid. My name is Muriel. I'm an angel of the Lord."

Claire's aim doesn't waver. Her knees shake, her food rolls in her gut, and she knows the threat of a gun means less than nothing to an angel, but her aim does not waver.

Muriel lowers her hand. "You were Castiel's, briefly," she states, and a shiver traces up Claire's spine. "Do you know where he is?"

The mild question lands like a punch. Winded, mind racing, Claire asks cautiously, "Don't you?"

"He is..." Muriel glances away. In the moment her attention is elsewhere, Claire risks a glance toward the counter: the shouting man--one of the croats--is just visible, sprawled on his back on the linoleum floor, charred holes where his eyes should be. The cook has fallen across the counter, also missing his eyes. Claire swallows convulsively, and turns her attention back to Muriel. "Castiel distanced himself from Heaven some time ago. But the war is going badly, and it's important that we find him."

"I don't know," Claire says automatically. "I don't know where he is. I haven't seen him in years." She hasn't seen her father in _years_ ; she's tried, so hard, not to think about that. She bears Muriel's gaze with her teeth digging into her tongue, her hand cramping uselessly on her gun, her skin itching with awareness of the bodies at the counter. She smells burnt flesh and bites her tongue even harder, willing herself not to be sick.

Muriel sighs. "We would prefer not to leave without him. If you discover his whereabouts, please pray."

"Wait, you're--" Claire's gun hand drops. "The angels are leaving? How? I mean, where are you going?" Muriel's eyes--her vessel's eyes, big and expressive despite the otherly tempest perched behind them--widen in alarm, then shutter. She says nothing. "If you find Castiel," Claire presses, fighting the sudden quaver in her voice, "will...will you take my dad, too?"

Muriel blinks. She stares, her head tilting slowly to the side. "We only want Castiel," she says finally. "Not your father."

Claire's breath catches.

**Author's Note:**

> REV 12:9 actually reads: "The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."
> 
> REV 3:20 actually reads: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me."


End file.
